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This study aims to investigate the factors influencing the citrus trade in Indonesia, the effects of tariff and non-tariff policies on the industry and the welfare of producers and consumers.

The research used annual series data from 1991 to 2021 and employed inferential, simulation, and descriptive analyses. The two-stage least squares (2SLS) of 19 simultaneous equations were used to estimate parameters.

The results indicate that free trade policies and restrictions have influenced the citrus industry, leading to a reduction in Indonesian citrus imports, and increased consumer and producer prices. However, eliminating import tariff policies on citrus from China and import restrictions increased producer surplus while decreasing consumer surplus, government revenue, and total welfare. Therefore, trade policies should be combined with non-trade policies such as citrus region development policies and advancing cultivation technology.

This study provides empirical evidence for the Indonesian government to formulate effective citrus trade and development policies. It emphasizes the importance of carefully considering the impact of trade policy on the citrus industry and the need to implement non-trade policies such as citrus zone development policies and advancing cultivation technology to benefit both producers and consumers.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-02-2023-0148

The purpose of this study is to analyze the affordability and sustainability of residential water consumption in Ecuador, a developing country.

To determine affordability, the authors assess water consumption and its distribution across different income levels of the population in the three main cities: Cuenca, Guayaquil and Quito. The authors then simulate the effects of a pricing policy on sustainability by deriving demand elasticities through a quadratic almost ideal demand system (QUAIDS).

Results show that Ecuador has low water tariffs with respect to other cities in Latin America, which points to its affordability. However, sustainability might not be guaranteed since consumption is overall higher than the level suggested by the World Health Organization. From an economic point of view, this could be motivated by the low tariffs. Indeed, the simulation of a pricing policy shows that higher prices can significantly reduce demand for most of the sample. However, in low-income households this reduction may compromise vital consumption.

This research has important implications in terms of stimulating the discussion of how water affordability and sustainability can be achieved. For the case study, Ecuador, the results indicate that sustainability may not be guaranteed and that policies need to be designed to encourage it. Another implication is that population income levels should be considered to avoid negative effects for the most vulnerable groups. The main limitations of this study are methodological. First, the QUAIDS model is based on a conditional demand model (Zhen et al., 2013), which does not take into account spending on other goods. Second, data availability is limited and prevents a deeper analysis.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to analyze these issues in Ecuador, a country that recognizes the human right to water at the constitutional level.

The purpose of the paper is to explore the economic repercussions of potential India–USA free trade agreement (FTA) on the trade of agricultural commodities at HS 2-digit level.

The analysis is undertaken by assuming tariff reduction in a phased manner using the World Integrated Trade Solutions (WITS)-SMART partial equilibrium model to identify the trade creation and trade diversion effects.

Overall results show that both the trading partners gain from the proposed FTA. Trade creation dominates over trade diversion in India's analysis.

An FTA between India and the USA could be an essential step toward more liberal trade regimes and provide enormous economic benefits to both countries. Government of both the countries should support deeper integration. This will create more job opportunities and generate prosperity in both economies.

There are numerous studies conducted on evaluating the impact of FTAs ratified between countries. But there are limited studies which evaluate the impact of the proposed India–USA FTA on the economies of both trading partners specifically on the agriculture sector.

This study reveals the economic impact of the Indo-Pacific Strategy on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

This paper uses the GTAP model to analyze the economic effects of RCEP under the effect of the “Indo-Pacific Strategy” under different scenarios.

The results show that (1) with the improvement of the implementation effect of the US “Indo-Pacific Strategy,” the welfare level of China has gradually had a significant negative impact, while the welfare level of US Allies and partners has been further improved. (2) The implementation of the Indo-Pacific Strategy will further expand the import scale of Japan, South Korea and other Allies that are both RCEP members and the USA and slightly reduce the import scale of the European Union (EU) and other countries. (3) After the USA implemented the “Indo-Pacific Strategy,” its export scale has significantly improved, and it has been able to completely offset the adverse effects of the signing of RCEP on its exports. China's export scale has also gradually declined, and Japan has benefited the most.

There are three main possible contributions to this article: first, the authors combined geopolitical factors to simulate and evaluate the economic effects of RCEP under different Indo-Pacific Strategy implementation scenarios, which is more relevant than analyzing the economic effects of RCEP in a “vacuum.” Second, the standard static GTAP model can only measure the change of equilibrium state before and after the trade policy. At the same time, the dynamic GTAP model (GTAP-Dyn) introduces mechanisms such as capital flow and capital accumulation and treats time as a continuous variable affected by exogenous variables so that each variable has a time dimension so as better to simulate the medium- and long-term economic effects. This paper refers to the dynamic recursion method of Walmsley (2006) and Yang (2011) to update the base year of the GTAP version 10.0 database to 2020, that is the time when RCEP officially reached 2020. The simulation results of shock variables introduced into the baseline scenario are more reliable. Third, the authors analyze the welfare effect of RCEP and the impact on the import and export of relevant countries from the macrolevel and examine the impact on different products in different countries from the microlevel.

This paper empirically investigates the demand for pastured eggs in the United States and evaluates the welfare consequences of Japan's egg import tariff reductions for the US consumers.

Using household-level Nielsen Homescan panel data, a fixed-effects Heckman two-stage sample selection model is estimated.

The estimation results ascertain the importance of a set of household socioeconomic characteristics, which are found to influence both the purchase probabilities and the consumption amounts associated with pastured eggs. In addition, demand for pastured eggs is estimated to be inelastic, and pastured eggs are found to be a normal good, more specifically a luxury.

The dataset used in this study reflect purchases only for at-home consumption, lacking information on away-from-home purchases.

Building upon previous research, this study makes the following distinct contributions to the current literature. To the best of our knowledge, it constitutes the first study to empirically examine the demand for pastured eggs, using household-level panel data and an estimation model that not only allows for left-censoring but also controls for regional and time fixed effects. Second, the present study reflects a unique effort in analyzing the adverse welfare consequences of the increased egg prices in the United States brought by a reduction of Japanese import tariffs on US-supplied eggs, focusing specifically on pastured eggs.

The paper attempts to discuss the optimal pricing decisions under the decentralized and centralized decision and analyze the influence of online reviews and in-sale service on dual-channel supply chain. Finally, the authors design a two-part tariff coordination mechanism.

To deal with this pricing conflict problems of dual-channel supply chain consisting of dominant manufacturer and a retailer, considering the fact that online reviews and in-sale service are important factors on consumers’ purchase decisions, the authors establish some basic models and exploit them to discuss the optimal pricing decisions under the decentralized and centralized decision and analyze the influence of online reviews and in-sale service on dual-channel supply chain. Finally, the authors design a profit-sharing coordination mechanism.

The results show that the optimal online direct selling price is positively correlated with product perceived quality obtained from online reviews and negatively correlated with the in-sale service. The traditional retail price is positively correlated with the in-sale service and weakly correlated with online reviews. For the manufacturer and retailer, whether decentralized decision or coordination contract, their profits increase with the increase of the in-sale service in a certain range and quality perceived from spontaneous online reviews. Online reviews and in-sale service are important factors on consumers’ purchase decisions. Positive in-sale services and online reviews can provide consumers with a better shopping experience, thereby promoting their enthusiasm for shopping and improving their quality of life. The two-part tariff coordination mechanism improves the profits of the manufacturer and the traditional retailer, respectively, through the transfer fee.

The proposed approach can well analyze the channel conflicts and pricing problems between retailers and manufacturers with respect to product offline price and online price. The analysis and results can inform decision-making for manufacturers and retailers.

This paper examines how a firm's hierarchical complexity, which is determined by the way it organizes its subsidiaries across the hierarchical levels, can impact its stock price crash risk.

The authors employ a measure of hierarchical complexity that captures the depth and breadth of how subsidiaries are organized within a firm. This measure is calculated using information about firms' subsidiaries extracted from the Bureau van Dijk (BvD) database that allows the authors to construct each firm's hierarchical structure. The data sample includes 2,461 USA firms for the period from 2012 to 2017 (11,006 firm-year observations). Univariate tests and panel regression are used for the main analysis. Two-stage-least-squares (2SLS) instrumental variable regression and various other tests are employed for robustness check.

The results show a positive relationship between hierarchical complexity and stock price crash risk. This relationship is amplified in firms with a greater number of subsidiaries that are hierarchically distanced from the parent company as well as in firms with a greater number of foreign subsidiaries in countries with weaker rule of law.

This paper is the first to investigate the impact hierarchical complexity has on crash risk. The results highlight the role that a firm's organizational structure can have on asset pricing behavior.

This research aims to study a broad range of sustainability aspects and develop a set of indicators with their subjective relevance to each of the sustainability dimensions that will help to improve the sustainability level of the water system of Nur-Sultan (Kazakhstan).

The broader list of indicators (which were identified through a thorough review of the literature) was assessed by water-related industry professionals and experts who were asked to assess the compliance of suggested indicators to five criteria of sustainability using a Likert scale.

It was found that the highest-ranked indicators across all five categories were mainly related to the chemical and physical quality of water, followed by availability of individual water meters as well as water supply tariffs' adjustment to users' income, and issues of ageing infrastructure. The lowest-ranked indicators among all categories were mainly related to investments into research and development, water management and awareness, feedback systems and flexibility. The least ranked indicators are seen to be more related to the scenarios when basic needs are covered and the stakeholders have extra time and resources for advancing the levels of water infrastructure sustainability.

The ranked and categorized indicators can be used as a powerful decision-making tool to improve the sustainability of the water system of Nur-Sultan or any other city in a developing country.

By conducting this study, it was aimed to address the aforementioned gap in the field in terms of running a wider scope assessment of indicators rather than looking at conventional environmental and socio-economic aspects. This provides novelty to the study, especially in the context of developing countries that need more guidance in terms of sustainable development of the water-related infrastructure.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the impacts that the recent proliferation of private and overlapping standards is having in the trade of agricultural products from developing countries.

In a first stage industry experts in the Chilean fresh fruit trading industry were interviewed to understand the perceived impact that private standards are imposing in the industry. These interviews allowed to identify the market case study, table grapes, the landscape of private standards and their prevalence in different countries. In a second stage, a gravity trade model for trade in table grapes was estimated, with a focus on the more stringent countries identified by experts in the first stage.

We show evidence that the proliferation of private standards required by large European retailers has diverted trade away from more stringent countries that require more certifications (and into less stringent European markets). We also show that the costs of these additional certifications have been shared by trading partners, via an increase in direct sales, as opposed to consignment (the traditional marketing mode), which is associated with higher prices.

The impacts of the recent proliferation of private and overlapping standards in international trade needs to be better understood both by the legal and economic literature. While the use of private standards has been growing since the 1990s, there is a recent trend of large European retailers imposing their own and overlapping standards that needs to be better understood to inform policy.

While there is a thin literature on the impact of private standards on trade, most of this has studied the effects of the now de facto mandatory GlobalGAP certification. However, there is a recent trend by large European retailers of demanding their own private certifications, together with other already existing overlapping private standards. This study describes and analyzes the impacts of this rather new trend.

This paper focusses on the aftermath of disruptions and the importance of the two largest canals (Suez and Panama), commenting on how during the pandemic the canal fees were lowered. Considering the ongoing efforts to decarbonize shipping, some of the ongoing disruptions will help reach these objectives faster.

Following a literature review of route choice in shipping, and a presentation of significant disruptions in recent years, the author deploys a simplified fuel consumption model and conduct case study analyses to compare different routes environmentally and economically.

The results explain why at times of low fuel prices as in 2020, canals provided discounts to entice ship operators to keep transiting these, instead of opting for longer routes. Considering the ongoing repercussions of the pandemic in supply chains, as well as the potential introduction of market-based measures in shipping, the value of transiting canals will be much higher in the coming years.

The main limitation in this work is that the author used the publicly available information on canal tolls, for the different ship types examined.

The envisioned model is simple, and it can be readily used for any ship and route (port to port) combination available, if ship data are available to researchers.

It is possible that canal tolls will increase, to account for the additional environmental benefits brought to ship operators.

The methodology is simple and transferable, and the author proposes several interesting research questions for follow-up work.